


penny for a kiss

by simplyprologue



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Kissing, Post-Season/Series 03, Rough Sex, Shower Sadness, Such a Collection of Strange Tonal Dissonance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:31:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7268365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They take their bodies home from Polis. It takes a little while for their souls to catch up. Or, PTSD is a bitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	penny for a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Archiving some ficlets from my tumblr, etc etc.

The doctor tends to everyone’s injuries, except her own. And no one thinks to tend to their tireless and unflinching Dr. Griffin, not with her daughter asleep and under a sedative in the medical bay. No one, not even Jackson, now too afraid to touch the mentor whose torture he was party to. No one, except for Marcus.

“Your throat,” he says by way of explanation, careful not to crowd her as he lifts her hair away from her neck. “It’s bleeding.” 

The blisters from the rope burns have opened, tender skin weeping. 

“Oh.” Her voice isn’t even a whisper, but a tired breath. His touch makes the muscles -– that she didn’t realize she was tensing, as if she was holding herself upright on invisible strings suspended from the ceiling – in her back and shoulders settle and smooth. Swaying on her feet, she leans into him. “I–-” 

“Abby? Let me?” he asks. 

Anyone can put antiseptic cream and gauze on an open wound, but she doesn’t think she could stand to let most everyone touch her now. Not after the violations she’s endured, not after what her hands have wrought on their own. But her job is to comfort and heal, and so she has. She doesn’t know how much longer until what’s been done truly sets in, but until then she’ll carry on the best she can. 

Marcus’ wrists are neatly bandaged. 

“I–-” Her voice breaks. 

God, she wants him to touch her. The last time she was safe it was because he was there. (The last time she was in danger was because he was there, but her mind has not processed that yet.) But is safety something she knows how to feel now? 

“Abby?” 

Wordlessly, she sits on an empty bed, nodding. “Please,” she whispers, shoulders curling inwards. She feels every bit like a structure collapsing inwards on itself, days overdue for demolition. 

His hands shake as he mends her the best he can. 

She trembles. 

Neither mentions it to the other, but slowly, the adrenaline lingering in their veins begins to recede. Exhaustion weighs heavily on their limbs; they have no memory of the last time they slept. They curl up together on the broken down mattress. Rest does not come, but their tangled-up bodies anchor them to right side of reality, 

  
  


 

It’s different now, in this tremulous after. After what they’ve done to their bodies and each other, the idea of kissing for any purpose beyond the rote is alien. One thing seems to be universal to all of ALIE’s victims no matter if they were under her control for days or weeks or months – doing anything just because it  _ feels  _ good or because they want to is nerve-wracking. 

They sit on his bed – Clarke is asleep in hers – with their thighs touching. Pulses thrumming with anxiety, they feel like teenagers in the first blush of love.  _ Is this okay? Am I doing this right? How should I angle my head?  _ There’s no goal here, no agenda. 

Abby tangles their fingers together in her lap, turning to cross one of her legs over his lap. His other hand comes to her face, thumb tracing the rounded hill of her cheekbone, her jaw, her chin. Her face is familiar to him, memories of shapes and curves decades old, but he’s never examined her from so close before. 

There’s no rush. Nowhere to be tonight. No one calling for help. 

Sighing, she leans her cheek into his palm. Then slides one of her hands into his hair, closing her fingers in his waves. There’s a curl flopping over his forehead in a way she’s come to find endearing, her eyes flicker to it as she leans in closer, their faces mere inches apart. 

Marcus’ breath hitches, and she can feel the exhalation of breath against her mouth. He murmurs her name, the pad of his thumb skating over her bottom lip. 

“Yes?” she asks, her head feeling cottony and light. 

His gaze drops to her mouth, color rising on his cheeks. “Can I?” 

“Uhuh.” 

With the barest of grazes, his lips meet hers. It’s featherlight, an examination of sensation and mechanics more than anything else. Abby’s eyes flutter closed, her fingers clenching against the back of his head. 

It’s almost like they don’t know what to do. Their lips meet once, twice, three times, a fourth, before they remember that tongues can be utilized in this way too. Slowly, they relax into each other, bodies coming together in a less awkward manner, and when they stop, they don’t actually part. 

“Hi,” Abby whispers against his mouth. 

The pink on his face deepens to red. “Hi.” 

  
  


 

She has Raven’s mp3 player and speakers, not playing the music at full volume like she had when she was frying ALIE out of her brain, but loudly enough so that the fragments of the ALIE program insinuate themselves into her thought process she can stop and listen to someone else’s voice. 

_ A little more stupid, a little more scared, every minute more unprepared.  _ She’s not the Chancellor, but neither is Marcus and certainly not Thelonious. Clarke is the Commander, according to the encampment of loyal Grounders outside their walls, but  _ someone  _ has to read the reports on rationing and food stores and figure out how they’re going to survive the next two weeks so they can try to figure out how to survive the next six months. _ I made a mistake in my life today. everything I love gets lost in drawers, I want to start over, I want to be winning, way out of sync from the beginning… _

They’ve been back in Arkadia for three hours, and have hundreds of more people to take care of than before, even after factoring in the early projections of the ALIE casualty count. 

“Hey.” 

She didn’t even hear the door to the office open. Biting her lip, she looks up at Marcus. “Hi.” 

“I think you might need a break,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets so that she can’t see the bandages on his wrists. It’s stupid, she thinks. She’s the one who dressed the wounds on the march back from Polis. She knows the wounds are there. How could she forget, anyway? “Clarke headed to bed, I thought you might want to–” 

“I need to finish this,” she interrupts, balancing her tone on the edge between tenderness and sternness. “But thank you, Marcus.” 

“You’re welcome.” His brows furrow together. “You are going to take a break now, Abby.” 

She lifts an eyebrow in response. “Am I?” 

“Yes!” he replies, voice low and determined and just slightly desperate. “You can’t stay awake through the next six months, and goddamn I know you’re going to try, but four hours of sleep isn’t going to doom us all.” 

“And going without it isn’t going to kill me, either.” 

They’ve all just had a refresher course on what won’t kill them, after all. And truth is, she doesn’t trust her head. She doesn’t trust her hands, or her eyes. She doesn’t trust that this is real and that sleep is just dreams, and she’d prefer to go to bed so exhausted that she cannot walk straight and she’s reminded that she’s not data in a stream but a flesh and blood woman. 

“Abigail,” he grumbles, leaning down to place his hands over the report she’s been reading. 

_ I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you…  _

She sighs. This is absurd. “That didn’t work when my mother did it, Marcus.” 

“Can you just, please…” A deep exhale rattles him, and she looks from his hands up to his face. “For a minute?” he continues, skipping over where there should have been a middle section of his request. “Please, Abby? I just need a minute with you. I know you need to do this,” he gestures to the mountains of reports and maps she’s pulled, “But please can we–” 

Oh. 

He holds his hand out to her. Placing her palm in his, she stands, silent as he pulls her to him.  _ I wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up, so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain… _

_ God I’m very, very frightening, I’ll overdo it… _

It starts as a hug, before they start swaying together to the music. It truly is absurd,  _ dancing  _ in the middle of the nuclear apocalypse. Eyes half closed, she rests her head on Marcus’ shoulder, letting him wrap his arms around her waist. He leans down, resting his cheek against her crown. 

The song ends, and the next one starts. They keep swaying. 

His hand slides up her back to tangle in her hair. Humming, Abby pulls back slightly, angling her head so that their faces are inches apart. The last time she kissed him, it was at ALIE’s command. It wasn’t because she… 

_ I’m under the gun again  
_ _ I know I was a 45 percenter then  
_ _ I know I was a lot of things  
_ __ But I am good, I am grounded 

“Do you mind if I?” she murmurs, gaze flickering to his mouth. Her fingers scratch through his beard, hand fanning out over his cheek. 

He colors slightly. “Why would I?” 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you.  _ They’ve been in each other’s thoughts, they know how the other feels. But now it’s muddled down by so much else. 

Still rocking back and forth to the music, Abby pulls his lips down to meet hers. How soon again they will be parted? She doesn’t know many more times they’ll be able to come back to each other. When they’ll have their last kiss. She’ll just have to keep kissing him, she thinks, and carving out other firsts for them so by the time they meet their last… she cannot survive having anymore regrets. 

Marcus buries his face in her hair. 

They’re dancing in a burning room. 

  
  


 

There are moments where she’s pushed out of her body. She is no longer a person, but something that exists outside of her flesh, looking down at her life like an spectator. The cost of survival is high. The day has come where none of them can hide from what they’ve done. 

The body where she once was knows how to perform basic tasks, lie with nimble fingers and excellence of technique. No one expects her talk – the day after Clarke destroyed the City of Light, her neck became swollen and tender, and the damage to her larynx was apparent. It’ll heal in time, she knows. But no one expects her to try to rasp anything from her bruised and mottle throat. She does not know the last time she ate, or drank, slept, or showered. All these things that she’s done; all the these things they’ve yet to do. How much more blood must be spilled, now to save them from an irradiated death? How many bullets? How many swords? How many must sacrifice themselves? 

_ Me,  _ she thinks.  _ Let it be me.  _

She longs to be weak. To collapse into Marcus’ arms in bed and weep, slumber for days. Render herself entirely ignorant of the trials to come. Instead she feels as if she is operating a lumbering facsimile of herself. forcing out her thoughts and her needs to keep herself from crumpling to the floor. 

It’s the end of the day, and she looks in the mirror. A few seconds later, she recognizes the pale creature in front of her is, in fact, herself. Papery skin and greasy hair, hollowed eyes and bruises fading from purple to green. Her fingers lift to her throat, fingertips brushing the healing blemishes. She cannot feel her own touch.  _ Clean.  _ She should at least look  _ clean.  _ Clumsily, she strips off her clothes and stumbles into the shower. Balance gone, she’s unsteady on her feet and when her shoulder hits the wall of the stall, she closes her eyes and slides down to sit on the floor. 

Setting the water for as hot as it’ll go, she sits under the stream. She knows she has fifteen minutes before the automatic shut off. 

The temperature is scalding, but she’s just relieved to be feeling something. 

Steam unfurls around her. Water saturates her scalp, plastering her hair to her face and neck and shoulders. Slowly, she curls into herself, bringing her knees to her chest and tucking her face towards her legs. She doesn’t hear when the bathroom door opens. 

“Abby?” 

Inhaling deeply, she rolls her neck to look at Marcus. It’s good that she can’t speak, but she really doesn’t feel like attempting an explanation of what’s going on in her head right now. She expects a surge of adrenaline to blast through her veins, to feel that feral drive to stand and protect herself. Instead all she feels is tired, and docile. 

The look on Marcus’ face is soft, but her eyes flutter closed anyway. Leaning her head back against the cold wall, she wraps her arms around her middle. 

She doesn’t hear him toe off his boots, or take off his shirt. But she does hear when his belt buckle and jeans hit the floor. Sighing, she looks up at him. He, perhaps, looks as desolate as she does. Over what, she doesn’t know. She hasn’t been updated on the nuclear containment plan in days, hasn’t gone to any of the strategy meetings or briefings. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, sitting next to her. One of his arms falls over her shoulder, his hand cradling her head under his neck. “I wasn’t paying attention.” 

_ To what?  _ she thinks. 

Tears burn her eyes, obscuring her vision. Starting to shake, she takes the hand he rests in her lap, bringing it to her face. The clean gauze of his dressings soaks through, and she undoes it. His forearms are fluorescent purple, his wrists and palms nearly black. Chin trembling, she brushes the lightest of kisses over the impact point. 

“I’m sorry,” she tries to say. It isn’t audible. 

Hugging her to him tightly, Marcus drops his mouth to her temple.  _ Happy kisses,  _ Clarke used to say when she was small, running to her with open arms. There were happy kisses, and sad kisses, and scared kisses. Marcus keeps his lips to the side of her head, his nose buried in her wet hair. 

_ Sorry kisses. _

  
  


 

The nightmares are a part of them now. It’s hard to tell the difference between the waking world and sleep, between presence and absence, between pleasure and pain. At times it’s hard to feel anything at all, to belong to themselves and not the mass of thoughts and memories they were in the City of Light. Loneliness is a gnawing beast on bruised hearts and tender minds – but oh, it is such a relief when they press their hands into their wounds.

The rope burn around her neck is healing slowly; his wrists ache, bone fragments embedded deep in sinew.

The sleep and they sleep and they sleep.

When they are able, that is. The days are aching and exhausting, and if they stop, they will  _ think.  _ They pass through crowded rooms where no one shares their thoughts but them. They grind their thoughts under the pestle of work and promise of certain doom until they collapse together on their bed.

The nights are dark, but rarely quiet.

Abby lifts her scalpel, resting the blade against Clarke’s chest, and presses in until it scrapes against her sternum. Her daughter screams, and so does he. And Marcus, curled into a ball and face hidden in her shoulder, tosses Bellamy’s broken body to the floor and advances on her, disarms her, and with the clarity of ALIE’s directive, aims the gun to her temple and squeezes the trigger before moving to his next target: Clarke. He wakes to Abby’s screams, certain that he murdered her child.

A mournful groan rattles up his throat, and he winds his arms around her neck. Tight, and then too tightly, too much like the noose. Her nails turn into his skin, and she pushes him away with blood on her fingers.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

The slurry of apologies is well-rehearsed by this point.

“No, I am, I—”

A thin sheen of sweat coats their bodies, but they’re too tired for the adrenaline to rouse them entirely. It’s more of a habitual annoyance by now, the counterpoint of their pounding hearts against the deadened weight in their limbs.

Abby looks at her hands, cringing at his blood under her fingernails, moaning low in remorse. But Marcus bears worse marks done by her hands, and he kisses the palms of her hands.  _ I left you unprotected,  _ a thought that does not belong to ALIE because she did not let him think it and because he did not know why Abby took the chip until he no longer thought of it as something to regret. But now he knows what they did to Raven, knows that had he still been in Arkadia that Thelonious would have never harmed either of them.  _ I left you behind and you were vulnerable.  _ He knows Abby would disagree with the notion that he left her anywhere, that she didn’t stay in Arkadia because it was the best decision she could have made based on what she knew when it was her turn to climb into the vent. _ Thelonious knew that as long as I was with you, I would kill anyone who tried to harm you. And then I left without you. And then I went to Polis, instead of going back for you. _

It was the best decision, based on what they knew. They always make the hard decisions, the best decisions, the  _ wrong  _ decisions.

They can’t  _ talk  _ about it. Not yet, not when it’s easier to slip away into the deepest corners of their minds. The City of Light is gone, but there are other ways to escape the overwhelming crush of being.

Marcus feels too much – after years of hardening his heart, he’s found himself unable to go back. He exists in the last moment before drowning, a heady rush of endorphins and oxygen deprivation and then the sweet bliss of death. But Abby buries the debris and the wreckage, identifying markings only uncovered by accident. The moments before and after sleep are when their minds meet like waves kissing the shore.

His mouth meets hers, soft and tentative. With a sigh, she fits her body into his. He draws her lower lip in between his, sucking gently. Then he pulls back; they blink blearily at each other.

_ I almost killed you,  _ she thinks.  _ I would have killed you. _

Another few minutes, he would have finished Bellamy and turned onto her daughter. And she would have leveled her gun at him, and put a bullet wherever her aim let her. Again, and again, and again. And she doesn’t think she would regret it – but she can’t talk about it. The loneliness is crushing, her tongue has forgotten how to speak, and she yearns to be able to just upload her thoughts into his head.

She uncovers the first piece of her own ruin.

“I love you,” she whispers, brushing a hand down his cheek.

He already knows this, because ALIE knew. “I love you too,” he murmurs. She already knows this, because ALIE knew. They already knew, and not just because ALIE knew. They ignore the sum of their sins and trials in daylight, but as they lay heart to heart, there’s no use in their face-saving lies.

One day, when they’re ready to be forgiven, they’ll tell each other the rest of the truths they horde to harvest their pain.

  
  
  


 

He likes being her favorite target, her emotional whipping boy. There’s very little that Abby doesn’t internalize now, few emotions that don’t terrify her in their immensity compared to the diminished capacity that being chipped gave them. They all feel so large and so consuming, and there are so many. While Marcus lets himself be overwhelmed by his grief and fear and guilt, Abby tamps hers down until it escapes all at once. 

There’s nothing he won’t forgive her. It’s just a fact of their relationship.

He has her pinned to the bed with his body, his hands and knees braced wide as he thrusts into her as hard and fast as his hips will go. This can’t feel good, he knows it can’t, but its what she wants. 

Her nails rake down his back. Ragged and sharp, they draw blood. Hissing, he drops down onto his elbows, pulling one of her hands off his ass to pin it next to her head. He does it not because he dislikes the pain – his brain routes the bruises and the bloodshed to the corner of his mind that preens at getting what he deserves from her – but because he wants to bait her into more. Abby’s a fighter. And when she gets like this, blinded by lust and her own inwardly-turned rage and fear, fighting and fucking aren’t two separate poles but one magnetic clusterbomb in her brain. 

The sound that escapes her throat is something like a screech. 

Her free hand slaps down against his thigh, then his back, then his shoulder. For a moment, her fingers close into his hair, and pull hard. His head jerks back, and he’s knocked just off-balance enough that he can’t pin her – legs closing around his hips, she flips them over. 

Her body is suspended over him, long and arced. Marcus shudders; her eyes narrow. It’s rare Abby looks in control of herself, but she’s in control of both of them now. His fingers curl into her waist and he plants his feet, thrusting up into her still.  _ Harder. Harder. Harder.  _ Their bodies make wet sounds, the vacuum of joining and rejoining, hips slamming together at a fractious pace. Her chest and face flush red as she fights to breathe. 

So he puts his fingers in her mouth, curling them against her tongue and pulling her down to him. Her teeth bite, and she growls. 

One of her hands fits around his neck, fingers expertly finding his jugular and carotid. Not pressing, but the threat is there. Her eyes flash with anger, and his eyes find the red markings still healing at her own throat. The delicate flesh had burned, and then blistered, then scabbed. It still hurts her; he brings her tea with honey and lemon every morning. He’ll bring her a cup of it after this, too, considering the noises she’s been making. 

Her grip tightens, just enough for him to see stars, before she lets go. 

A low and raspy sound, he moans, every inch of his training as a guard disappearing as a deeper instinct takes hold and he submits to her. His fingers fall from her mouth, and she dives for shoulder, biting down. Marcus gasps, bucking up, hands finding purchase on her legs. Her teeth are sharp and unforgiving, and it hurts so good. 

Her fingers tighten around his airway again, making his head feel pleasantly light. He can’t think, not at all. 

It feels like release.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
